What's wrong with me and my nut plates/screws???

So we all have a bunch of nut plates and screws as provided by Zenith right?

I have most of mine installed and the screws are hand tightened - only a few turns until tight right? So I decide to tighten up an access panel and it's a SERIOUS effort to get any of the screws in tight. I figure maybe once they are in tight then I can undo them and they will then be smooth going in and out for access panel access right?

Well, no such luck. I can barely get them unscrewed and it's still way too hard to screw in and out. Pretty much unusable for an access panel.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem but I can't find any other threads addressing this.

I apologize if I'm just missing the prior discussins.

What have you all found? At this point I'm ready to drill them all out and use rivnuts!

Replies to This Discussion

This is a common problem/complaint. The nuts are slightly out-of-round so as to provide some thread-locking ability, but I agree - sometimes they are ridiculously tight!

This EAA Video recommends lightly chasing the nutplate threads with a tap to make them a bit less tight. I don't think I've resorted to that yet, but I usually very lightly grease a screw before using the nut plate the first time. I think the combo of a little lubrication and the screw slightly expanding the threads does the trick in most cases. It's not a bad idea to use a "sacrificial" screw on the first attempt so if you slightly tear the slot in the screw, you can toss it and use a fresh screw for the next attempt - usually that will go better with the lube and previous expansion.

Jim, for most of your access panels, or places you would use or like to use nutplates, the smaller sizes will be perfectly fine to use. The smaller sizes are much easier to screw in and out. You can use a squeezer to install the associated rivets in most places as well! The ACS catalog lists all the particular specifics.

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